Groups: what is the. difference between "groups" in "Space" vs. stand alone "Groups"?

As I had the same challenge in the planning phase of our community platform, I can share some of my thoughts about mixing Spaces and Groups.

First of all, its not a matter of a strict concept, how to fit them together. UNA even recommended once, not to mix group modules and better not to use them all together.

But it's a matter of your own concept, if you might want to mix them or not.

In our case, we started with Spaces and did not use Groups at all. But at a later phase of our community concept planning, we started about thinking how we can draw existing groups from other social networks to our own UNA community platform. If they are used to having groups functionality, they certainly want to stay together as a group and administrate that group with similare functionality they are used to on that other social network platform.

We use Spaces mod as a container for general topics, like business founding, family activities, health and wellbeing topics, etc.

Groups, on the other hand, have either a common purpose, may it be a common hobby (like the amateur soccer, golf, Volleyball team searching for new members and locations for their weekly matches), or a common interest (doing outdoor activities, a dance course, etc.). Often, their members live in the same area and use the groups module for organizing their face-to-face meetings.

That's our use case of having two group modules in coexistence next to each other. But, if you won't need two of them, because it's not necessary for your community project and might confuse members, it's certainly better to use only one of those.

Thank you so much again. You've been wonderful in answering my questions promptly today, and I really appreciate that.

I really need a system with two layers of interest or commonalities. For example, I may need to create a Space for different countries, but within each space, there is a group of interest that need their own group. For example, Soccer group, and basketball group in country A and same thing in country B and C and so on.

In UNA the many choices are attractive, but can be confusing as well. I thought we can create independent groups (although they undergo somewhat similar structure) in different spaces.

Now, I may need to use "Organizations" or "sub-spaces" if they don't have these restrictions and can subdivide the spaces without problems. The names don't matter here, but the functionality.

@thomlin I can't thank you enough, and if you have any more thoughts please share them with us.

Fathi

for example Here is the "file-context" menu in "Groups" that are under space (notice there is no option for file upload):

and here is the "file-context" in usual group (note that "file upload" option is available here):

My pleasure, if I could help you. And don't forget, groups can be integrated into spaces at any time, even when they were at first created as an individual group on their own. For example, we gave Standard, non-paying members, the permission to create their own (interest) groups. Later, when they pay for the upgrade to premium membership, they may include their group into one of the bigger topic spaces, which will bring them more audience and attention. I think the growth concept planning for a successful community platform has to have a strategy for animating the individual member to share to others in his or her private or professional social sphere.

Spaces and other group modules have their own permissions system called 'Roles'.

The Roles for group modules are to find in Studio - Forms - Roles. When you select Groups in the dropdown, you'll find the list of roles. Here you can specifically select, what each member with the assigned role is able to do.

Check the Files permissions if you cannot add files in a space. A member that has no permission to add files in the overall permission settings for membership levels, will also have no permission to add a file in any group module. Except, if you assign it a role, that has permission to do so.

For example, my member 'Moderator Member' has Moderator membership level. This level is allowed to upload files. This member has also admin role in my test group. That's why Moderator can perform all actions in the group timeline.

The subnavigation menu in the groups modules used to only show what elements are in there. I think, the devs team are working on adding elements from those overview pages, but didn't finish for all group modules, yet. That's the reason why they behave differently. For now, you can add elements in group modules by using the 'Add new...' content block, as you can see on the screenshot below. Check, if you have a new element creation block on your groups startpage, if it is not there.

Thanks a million!

What I try to do is to create a group (inside Space or Organization). This group can create their own files, posts, discussions..etc. When I try to do that in this "inside-group" using the "Add new..." (the block in setting is called: "create post" (see image below), it gives me no choice of visibility to that "inside-group", but gives me all options of existing groups and also gives me an option of the parent "Space", but that very "inside-group" is not visible to restrict posts there.

Therefore, I tried to use "create Post (context)" (image first below). However, when I do that, that block (create post context) does not show at all in the "sub-group" although I was able to add it (see second image below)

Another thing I noticed, in the "Add new block" menu, there is more than one of the options mentioned above (create post and also create post context). I am not sure why they have two of them and if there is any difference between them.

So, although the title of this discussion is re: files, but these differences between the "regular" Group and the "sub-group" also involves posts, discussion, and may be other items.

Hope we have some clarifications regarding this..

@Alex T⚜️ @LeonidS